Collection Highlights

This richly-colored landscape panel from Tiffany Studios was originally the centerpiece of a ten-panel window designed for the landing of a massive marble staircase in the Pittsburgh home of Richard B. Mellon (1858–1933). It is newly on view in the exhibition Revival and Reform—Eclecticism in the 19th-Century Environment and included in the Museum’s cellphone audio tour. Mellon, a member of the influential banking family, built the sixty-room house in 1908–9. The panel’s design makes brilliant use of the reforms brought to glassmaking by Louis Comfort Tiffany. With opalescent glass alone, the panel presents an evocative scene of rippling water, floating lotus flowers, and a footbridge draped with roses. Cypress trees rise against a distant horizon. Different types of glass produce various effects. Foliage, or confetti, glass, for example creates flecks of pink in the roses and mimics the light and shadow of leaves. Dramatic and peaceful at once, the experience of the window in its original location must have been unforgettable. The window was divided into separate sections when the house was demolished in 1940.